(Video in French, but with explanatory English captions.)

The geniuses at French company HumaRobotics have taught the Nao Robot platform to play Connect Four with a physical board. Now this is an impressive feat in its own right, but in addition, they’ve included error detection and (apparently, though not shown in the video) cheating detection. They’ve also made it possible for the robot to recognize people its played with before.

More information is available from this excellent post at Singularity Hub.

It won’t be many more years before a generation is born for whom playing with robots growing up is an everyday experience. These sorts of robotic playpals are high-tech research gimmicks now, but as the platforms and software mature and we begin to have an actual science and industry of social robotics, expect to see robotic play pals like these hitting the store shelves. (It should go without saying that Connect 4 can be thought of as an arbitrary proof of concept and that even a first generation of robotic play palls would have a huge number of different games in its repertoire.)

Expect, too, the standard industrial phenomena of rapid generational improvement, IP theft / cheap knock offs, a great deal of media hand wringing about what these robots are doing to “the Children”, etc.